Schizophrenia

Used for

dementia praecox, early onset schizophrenia, hebrephrenic schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, simple schizophrenia

See for

childhood schizophrenia

Broader Terms

psychosis

Narrower Terms

paranoid schizophrenia

Related Terms

schizoid personality

Scope Note

class of psychoses with disturbance mainly of cognition (content and form of thought, perception, sense of self versus external world, volition) and psychomotor function, rather than affect.

Facts

• Schizophrenia is a condition characterised by disturbances in a person's thoughts, perceptions, emotions and behaviour.
• Schizophrenia is now used to describe a cluster of symptoms that typically includes the following: Delusions.
• Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality and by significant social or occupational dysfunction.
• Schizophrenia is a mental illness that usually strikes in late adolescence or early adulthood, but can strike at any time in life.
• It represents one of the most complex of all mental health disorders and it involves a severe, chronic, and disabling disturbance of the brain.